Dinner on Tuesday night was terrific – great food, much laughter and the fines were top class.    The first day our Support Crew did a wonderful job keeping everyone safe and Micky G and his team must be congratulated.

Today started at 5.45 am for most of us with breakfast at Top Deck Restaurant who have done a great job providing food for lunch on Tuesday, dinner Tuesday night and then breakfast this morning.

After an extremely hot and exhausting day yesterday, visiting 4 schools and numbers of our newbies feeling somewhat apprehensive of what lay ahead over the next 5 days, this morning dawned cooler which was a welcome relief as today is probably one of the most challenging between Walpole and Pemberton – the scenery is quite beautiful but the logging trucks and traffic on the road is challenging.

Tom Nielson has provided us with all sorts of statistics and today saw us cover 129.78 klms with an elevation gain of 1,665 metres which took the peleton some 4 h 35min 30sec with an average speed of 28.3 kph – interestingly last year we did exactly the same klms in 4 h 35min 26 sec – so 4 seconds difference!

Micky G and Dr Roger almost had a disaster today, but quick thinking and dexterity saved the day and themselves – it is hairy out there, there is no doubt and having an experienced team looking after our guys and gals in the peleton is the reason we have the reputation for safety, professionalism and a very disciplined group of riders.

Our school visit today was to Pemberton School where after riding up that last rotten hill, bought about a great lunch, a warm down and then talking to the whole school from grade 1 through to grade 10.    As you will appreciate the primary school children are not who we consider we can talk to in depth about what Youth Focus does and how we go about it so we initiate our 11 RFY captains and 11 school team members dividing them into groups where they race with a bike pump, then the next member races to take the tyre from the team captain, back again with the next team member for blowing up the tyre and then the last team member (no.4) executes the replacing of the tyre with the team captain before racing across the finish line.    The rest of the school acts as the cheer squad – they loved it and we ended up having to do it 3 times with prizes for all those team members .  The primary school then return to class and the riders are able to speak to the high school students at a level that they understand and become involved in by asking questions.  

It is a great feeling knowing that we are pushing the message of awareness and prevention – today the Mirvac team consisting of Mary, Andrew, Cam and Tony delivered the message of “communication” in many forms but together as a team.

Many of our riders are feeling quite euphoric today having accomplished a difficult challenging ride today – a personal achievement.

Forward and onward with dinner at the Pembie Hotel tonight, more fines and of course the challenge with the locals after dinner – pool and arm wrestling to have some of the community involved and knowing who we are – after 8 years of staying here at this hotel, we almost have a yearly passport to Pemberton.

All is going well from this end, so sign off from me with more tomorrow when we visit Busselton.

Jenny Allen